


The Hair Drying Incident

by Thornapple



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Bickering, Crack, Embarrassed Kylo, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Humor, Petulant Kylo, Post-TLJ, Pragmatic Rey, Rey learns about hair dryers, Shirtless Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 20:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13934253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thornapple/pseuds/Thornapple
Summary: The Force Bond can make its presence known at the most inconvenient of times. Featuring an embarrassed Kylo Ren, an inquisitive Rey and an innocuous hair dryer. Crack.





	The Hair Drying Incident

* * *

She’d been in the midst of poring over some diagrams in one of the pilfered Jedi texts when a loud, truly obnoxious noise started out of nowhere and broke her concentration.

Acting on pure instinct, Rey whirled around, grabbing her blaster (set to ‘stun’) and aiming at the source of the noise, only to freeze and stare in shock at the pasty apparition in front of her. Said apparition stared back in equal parts horror and consternation, even as it tightly clutched the blaster-shaped object that had been, until two seconds prior, aimed at its head.

(Even in her surprise, Rey didn’t fail to notice the contraption twitch, as if the person holding it had, for a split second, thought to aim it at her like a blaster.)

“What _is_ that thing?” she finally managed, after what seemed like an eternity of mutual, dismay-tinged silence.

Kylo Ren glared at her, and with a hasty 'click', the noise stopped. “You can go figure that out yourself,” he snapped, with all the forced dignity of a person wearing only a towel around his waist. “In the meantime, _I_ have some important business to complete.”

“With what, that fake blaster?”

He made a slight coughing noise which Rey could have sworn sounded like he had just choked on his spit. Book and diagrams completely forgotten, and her curiosity temporarily getting the better of her dislike and embarrassment, she pressed on.

“Why’re you waving it around when you’ve just stepped out of the ‘fresher anyway? You were pointing it at your head. Wait – ” her mouth fell open, “you’re not going to _kill_ yourself are you?”

A blush was now spreading across Kylo’s face. With his hair wet, his mug-handle ears stuck out easily, and Rey watched as they slowly suffused with blood. He mumbled something unintelligible, hurriedly putting down the blaster-like object on an invisible table so that it vanished.

“What did you say?” she said, her voice rather louder than it needed to be. Some distant part of her mind told her that she was half-enjoying this, even if she didn’t quite understand what was going on.

He shot her an extremely dark look. “I said,” he enunciated clearly, with sarcasm dripping from every word, “that this just had to be the day when the connection lasted longer than ten seconds.”

“Yeah, well, that’s too bad.” This was the highlight of what had thus far proven to be a fairly monotonous day filled with indecipherable texts and complicated, faded diagrams. And this could be a chance to learn about some other First Order tech, provided she could get it out of him. “So you haven’t told me. What’s that thing you were holding? Why were you aiming it at yourself?”

She could practically hear his eyes roll all the way to the back of his head. “Well if you insist on badgering me about such things,” he said exasperatedly, “then no I wasn’t trying to kill myself. All that thing expels is hot air.”

Rey blinked. “That’s it?” She felt slightly let down.

Kylo considered that for a moment. “Well, cold air too, if you want it to. But I don’t use that setting often.”

She stared at him with a frown, taking in the wet hair, the towel, the now-unseen contraption which provided a supply of heated air –

“Oh. _Oh_.” Her eyes snapped back up to his face. “You need a _machine_ to dry your hair?” she said incredulously.

Her tone had rankled. “It’s not as straightforward as it looks!” he shot back defensively. “Having this kind of hair texture means that if it doesn’t dry properly it could get completely out of hand, especially with the extreme climates it’s had to go through and...” his face and ears were turning redder and redder, and the blush was starting to spread in blotches down his neck and chest.

“My mo – General Organa uses it to dry her hair,” he finished lamely.

“I haven’t seen her use it,” Rey pointed out.

“You’re on the Millennium Falcon,” he replied, his voice sour. “That piece of scrap wouldn’t have a hair dryer.”

“I see.” The moment was almost surreal; she had never seen Kylo quite so embarrassed. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t slightly horrifying.

“It’s just – ” she started, before biting off the end of her sentence. A nugget of pride meant that she refused to give him any more reason to look down on her life in Jakku. “I guess you learn something new every day,” she said, mainly to fill in the silence.

Kylo snorted. “Any time now would be good to cut off the connection,” he said in a voice of strained patience.

“I can turn my back again,” Rey offered. “We can pretend this never happened, except that now I know what hair dryers are.”

“For crying out loud – ”

“What? I’m not judging you for it, I just never thought that such an invention was necessary – ”

“You think my hair looks like this _naturally_ , desert rat?”

“Wait, why are your palms shiny? Do you put oil in your hair too?”

“ _Urgh_.”

“How much of the First Order’s budget goes towards your personal grooming anyway? Are hair dryers expensive?”

“Public appearances are important, and you’re one to talk, seeing as you helped blow up so much of our stuff – ”

“Yeah, right, if you care about public appearances all that much I’ll eat my toenails. Public appearances my ass – you’re just like a hair dryer, all you expel is hot air – ”

“I don’t have to listen to this. I bet you don’t even _shower_.”

“You’re right, that was a bad one. I should’ve said that I wish that thing had been a blaster – ”

“Wait.” Kylo’s hands were now on his hips, the colour finally starting to fade from his chest and neck, though his ears remained stubbornly red. “Were you – worried that I was suicidal?” There was a strange note in his voice that Rey didn’t like. Her eyes narrowed slightly.

Just to spite him, she snapped, “Not worried – hopeful.”

His face darkened into a scowl. “Fine.”

Rey knew that she didn’t owe him anything, but something niggled at the back of her mind. It took a while for her to figure out what it was, but when she finally pieced it together, she decided to strike a slightly less petulant note.

“For what it’s worth,” she offered eventually, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to look presentable.”

The responding sneer of disgust (and wounded pride) was nothing more or less than she had expected, but at least she had put it out there. Then there was silence. 

One beat. Two beats.

“I should get back to work,” she finally said.

Kylo grunted, eyeing her suspiciously. His hair was starting to dry naturally, and she couldn’t help but notice a few strands of frizz. “You do that,” he said, with that odd note in his voice again.

Rey sighed. “You should probably wet your hair,” she said helpfully, trying to make things less awkward. “It’s a slightly different shape from the usual.”

It was exactly the wrong thing to say. His expression darkened into a glower and he stepped forward, biting out, “Thanks a lot for the _advice_ , unwashed scavenge – ”

Rey blinked, staring at the empty space where Kylo Ren had stood but a second ago. An enormous wet footprint marked the spot where he had taken a step. Clearly the First Order didn’t invest in sufficiently absorbent bathmats, even for the Supreme Leader.

She ran a hand down her face, feeling slightly more invigorated than she had been ten minutes before. Most of the time their connections consisted _only_ of stony silences, veiled insults or wheedling questions. It wasn’t often that something useful came out of it.

Now – she eyed the crusty tome with some trepidation – it was time to get back to staring at diagrams.

 


End file.
